The Escape from Dunwall
by bren97122
Summary: Cecelia has realized that Dunwall is dying and she needs to find a way out... Fast. A companion to my "I'll Try and Find You Again" Fic. Also uses my Corvo X Cecelia ship.
1. Chapter 1

_Corvo, I'm going to try to make a break for it. If I hadn't met you, I wouldn't have had the courage to do this. I'll try and find you again, once this is all over. - Cecelia._

Cecelia didn't feel as if this note did too much justice. She wished that she could say more, but in reality, she couldn't really bring herself to do so. She also knew she needed to leave the area. Fast.

The City Watch was crawling across the Hounds Pit Pub looking for of the remaining Loyalists. She wasn't sure if her name was listed amongst the names of the more prominent Loyalists, but she didn't want to find out. She was happy though to find that Corvo had survived the plot against him. She knew without a doubt that she loved him. But Cecelia wasn't sure if he returned those feelings. Sure, they had a few quiet, misty eyed moments together, but was there anything more than that between them?

She once was sweeping a hallway when she overheard Callista and Lydia talking in a hushed tone. She was about to turn around when she heard Lydia say "Have you seen the way Cecelia looks at him? I'm telling you, there's something more happening there." Cecelia stopped behind a wall to listen further. Callista groaned. "No, Attano likes noblewomen. I mean, you have heard what people have said about him and our fair, deceased Empress." Lydia chuckled at this. "Sure I have. And a noble Cecelia is not!" she said.

Cecelia hurried away when she heard footsteps heading towards her. She was saddened. Corvo didn't feel anything for her. Did he? Maybe. Maybe not. How was she supposed to tell?

Back in the present time, Cecelia left her note to Corvo out in the floor in front of her abandoned apartment door. She grabbed a satchel and started to fill it with items she would need. A few tins of whale meat, a can of diced Tyvian apples, two bottles of Elixir, a couple of jars of water, and finally an old, rusty folding knife she found in the Pub's basement. It seemed to be useable and she had sharpened the blade the night before. She put the knife in her pants pocket and headed out the door down into the sewers where Corvo had appeared from.

She needed to leave this damn city. That was the number one priority at the moment. But after that where would she go? She could head back to the Pendleton family estate in southern Gristol but it would be unknown if she would still be welcomed there. She was a Pendleton, but a cousin only to the matriarch. She was employed there as a simple servant girl, but she was comfortable. But if the family found out that she was involved in the Loyalist Conspiracy, even if she played no active role in it, it would be most likely that she would be shot.

But did she have another option? Her own family lived in a small town near the western Morley coast, but they had fled to a foreign country to wait out the Plague and infighting tearing at the Empire. They had left without informing her, and learned only from her cousin Trevor before they relocated to the Pub.

Cecelia burst out of a metal sewer door. She had no idea where she was and had no map.

She looked around for clues as to her location. Cecelia did see a sign advertising whisky. And there was another sign for the Golden Cat. She walked down a deserted cobble stone lane, with corpses of Weepers and others scattered about. Cecelia found this horrendous, there were just dead people laid out like trash in the streets! Rats gnawed at them and flies flew around the older ones. Couldn't the city do anything about this? Mass burials? Take them away on barges? Burn them even? Something at all?

Cecelia was no civic worker and the sight of this made her only want to leave Dunwall even more.

But still the question of her location still troubled her. She was pondering it when she tripped over an empty crate. Reeling back her leg to kick the offending object, she noticed writing on it. The crate read "DUNWALL WHISKY. THE DEFINITON OF QUALITY."

It dawned on her. She was in the now defunct distillery district, not too far from the docks. Maybe she could find a boat to take her home.

She walked down the abandoned street, not seeing many people, but it wasn't completely deserted. She examined a woman who looked no older than she was dragging a corpse out of a door. There were several stab wound in the corpse and she realized that it was a member of the vicious Bottle Street Gang.

Cecelia also realized that she needed to keep her head down in this place. The distillery district was Gang territory and she was sure a young, healthy woman such as herself would go a long way with them.

Cecelia rounded a corner, trying to find a map or someone who could tell her direction to a functioning dock. Cecelia tried to ask several people, "tried" being the key word. She either didn't try to when she saw someone because they looked... Scary to say the least, or simply ignored her.

She at last found a useable map and was delighted to see that the dock she was looking for was not too far from where she was. She headed down the street and was terrified to see that four Bottle Street Gang members heading down the same street in her direction. She needed to get to that dock, so she tried her best to go incognito. She pulled the cap she had been wearing around the pub out from her bag and put her hair underneath it as best she could before pulling the cap over her eyes. She placed her hands in her pockets and looked down at the ground. She also tried to fluff out her shirt more to make her chest look less, well, womanly, but to no real effect.

She heard the footsteps of the gang members draw near her and thought she heard them pass her without incident until she heard some footsteps come up behind her. And before she could run, a powerful hand wrap around her slim frame.

"Well, what do we have here?" A gruff male voice said.

Cecelia felt her stomach turned inside out. She pushed away from him and started to back up away from him. "I'm- I'm just passing through." She said weakly. She collided with another gang member as she backed up more. The gang member smiled at her. "Oh, you're just passing through? Well, sweetheart, you're gonna have to pay the toll."

Another one of the gang members roughly batted off her cap, which let her hair fall down over her shoulders.

"Whoa, a real-life redhead!" he said ecstatically. "I couldn't tell ya the last time I saw someone like you, missy." Cecelia found herself surrounded. She didn't like what was about to happen. One of the gang members grabbed her wrist, but in a flash, she whipped out her folding knife and stabbed him in the kidney. He released her and fell to the ground, howling in pain. Cecelia turned around and slashed the gang member behind her on the left arm.

The gang member with the punctured kidney spat out "The crazy bitch stabbed me!"

His buddies turned and faced Cecelia. The remaining three, including the one with the injured arm, drew their homemade machetes and faced her. "I _was _gonna go easy on you." One of them said as he held his bleeding arm. "But I guess you like it rough, huh?" Cecelia turned to run but her arm was grabbed again by a thug, who threw her to the ground. Another one viciously knocked her knife out of her hand while another started to force open the buttons on her shirt.

As she struggled, she noticed a strange black mist dissipate from a nearby rooftop and suddenly a person materialized near her location. She caught sight of a man in a red jacket with bandages covering his arms.

The thugs stopped trying to get her clothes off and faced the man. "Get out of here, old man!" one of them snarled. The man drew a thick, but elegantly crafted blade from its scabbard. "Get off that girl and leave here." The man growled. A thug took a step closer to him. "Or what?" he said.

The man put up his sword in a fighting stance. "I'll kill you all." The thug, angered by this, wildly swung his machete forward. The older man, with the skill of an elite swordsman, bent backwards underneath it and slashed his sword against the thug's legs, sending him to the pavement flat on his back. Before the thug could get up, the man pointed his sword down and stabbed him the diaphragm.

He turned to face the other thugs, who were enraged by their friend's death. The man swung his sword around and rushed them, first breaking the defense of one, landing his blade into the thug's shoulder, forcing him on his knees. As the thug bled out, a quick knee to the face from the man freed his blade. The final thug, the one with the injured arm weakly held up his machete.

The man calmly walked up to the last thug and quickly teleported behind him as the thug looked around, the man plunged his blade through his back, making it burst out his chest. The man let the thug fall to the ground, still bleeding. The final thug, the one with the injured kidney, tried to crawl away. "No, no, please!" the thug said. "Don't, please, I won't hurt anyone ever again!"The man calmly plunged his blade into the thug's chest as he gurgled out pleas.

The man faced Cecelia, who was still on the ground. He sheathed his blade and walked over to Cecelia. The man offered her his hand and helped her up. She noticed that his hand had the same mark Corvo has on his left hand.

Cecelia started to button up her shirt. "Thank you, sir." She said. The man nodded. "Not a problem. Where are you heading?" Cecelia motioned towards the direction of the dock. "There. I'm planning on leaving this wreck of a city." The man nodded. "Let me walk you there. I'm... Daud. I'm looking to get out of here too."

Cecelia and Daud walked down the street. She noticed that he walked with a limp and held a hand on his side. "Are you hurt?" she asked. "I got in a small fight." He said simply. Cecelia nodded, realizing that she shouldn't ask further.

They eventually reached the dock. She started searching for a ship to take her home, also noting how it started to rain. Daud started to walk away. "Hey, wait, Daud!" He turned back to her. "Thanks again." Cecelia said. "You could get a ride when I find a boat. I can take you back to my home; let you relax there for a bit. I live on a large estate!" Daud shook his head. "No, thank you, m'am. I'm not looking for help or anywhere to go. But thank you." And without another word, Daud soon vanished into a cloud of black mist.

Cecelia sat on a bench, waiting for some sort of boat. She soon heard one coming, and she noticed a familiar face piloting it. "Samuel?" She asked. Samuel looked up. "Cecelia? You made it out of the Pub alive?" He docked his boat and Cecelia ran to him. Samuel checked his fuel gauges. "You want to head somewhere?" he asked her Cecelia nodded. "Yes, the Pendleton Estate in Eastern Gristol. I work there."

Soon enough, they were leaving the city. "Hey, Cecelia, guess what?" Samuel asked her. "What is it?" she asked. "I just dropped off Corvo on Kingsparrow Island. Said he wanted to find Emily and end it." Cecelia's eyes lit up. At least he was still alive and this would hopefully soon end.

Cecelia smiled as the rain began to fall harder now and she and Samuel silently sailed out of the dying city.


	2. Chapter 2

Samuel had dropped her off at a rocky beach not too far from Cecelia's destination, the Pendleton Estate. She asked Samuel if he wanted to stay at the house for a while, he declined. When she asked why not, Samuel simply shook his head and said " I've just got somewhere to be." She said her final goodbyes to him and waved as she watched him depart over the horizon. Turning on her heels, Cecelia ran up a pathway towards the mansion in the distance.

Soon enough, she reached the front gate, which was slightly ajar. She took a deep breath, tucked her shirt into her pants, brushed off some dirt, and tied her hair into a ponytail. Cecelia pushed open the gate and headed up the tree lined drive to the front door, which was also slightly opened. She entered and was met with a chaotic scene of men and women running back and forth across the halls, reading papers, handing books to others, and arguing loudly. She didn't see any familiar faces.

She headed up a staircase to the Pendleton patriarch's study. Inside, she found Mr. Pendleton and Mrs. Pendleton locked in a vicious argument with a portly, be speckled man in a suit.

For the first time since her arrival, someone noticed Cecelia. The Pendletons both turned to her, shouting something at the same time. The other man also faced her and calmed down the pair.

"Are you Ms. Cecelia Pendleton, daughter of Tobias and Marisa Pendleton?" he asked her. Cecelia nodded slowly. "I am..." The man made a mark on a book he was holding. The two Pendletons looked at her, relieved. "What?" she asked perplexed. The man with the book smiled at her. "Well, Ms. Pendleton, you are rich." Cecelia was taken aback. "What... What do you mean?"

Mr. Pendleton started to explain. "Your 1st cousin Trevor was found dead earlier today. Poisoned, matter of fact." He didn't seem too concerned by this.

"Your second cousins Morgan and Custis, who were Trevor's brothers, have vanished from the Isles so it may seem. And with no other next of kin to be found, it seems that you are the only one next in line in accordance to Empire property laws to receive their money. In other words, you also own part of the estate in your name.

Cecelia felt her mouth drop open in shock. Just a few nights ago, she was sweeping floors, being yelled at by Trevor and dreaming about Corvo and what she would have to do to win his favor. But now, she had millions in coin at her disposal. She could also now be considered a noble woman.

When the initial shock of this wore off, she couldn't help but smile in delight and started to laugh uncontrollably. When the rest of the people in the room tried to calm her down, she left the room, walked down the hall, still laughing, and laughed all the way to Trevor's bedchamber, and flopped down on his bed and fell asleep.

She woke later that night, having regained her composure; she finalized the details of her newfound wealth with the rest of the Pendletons. She was still overjoyed at her now high position in society. She was no longer Cecelia Pendleton the servant girl, but now she was Cecelia Pendleton, the noblewoman.

But as the years started to go by, one thing still bothered her, she was wealthy and comfortable, and Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton had learned to treat her like she was their daughter. Now that she was rich with a prominent family behind her, many men started to find her a lot more attractive. She rejected any suitor her way and refused to see any for years. As things began to level out across the Empire under Emily Kaldwin's reign, she sent out her servants and messengers to head to other parts of the Empire to find him.

Corvo Attano.

She was still waiting for him to come into her life. She didn't want any other man. No one else would do. She had promised to find him again, but she was finding it hard to keep that promise.

Where had Corvo gone? Did he retreat to a remote Tyvian mountain? Or maybe a remote island off the coast of Morley? Was he even still in the Empire? Had Corvo caught a boat out of the nation and was currently in some far off country? Did he have another woman in his arms?

She wondered these things every night. It kept her awake some nights. She had fallen for Corvo, hard. She would do anything to find him again.

And eventually she did.

After a total of six years searching for him, she found Corvo in a remote part of Serkanos in a home he built himself. As Cecelia slowly walked up the sandy path to his home, she once again wondered if Corvo was still waiting for her. She had all the money, all the power she needed. But would he still want her? It had been almost seven years since they last saw each other. She had also recently found out that she was barren, not something that was good for a woman in the Isles. She finally reached the beach where his house was. She took a moment to observe the Serkanos sky during the sunset with its brilliant red and orange colors.

Cecelia saw Corvo sitting by the beach with his back to her. And as her fears began to subside, she said simply "Hello Corvo."

Corvo stood up and faced her. He immediately ran over and embraced her. "Cecelia Pendleton" he said. "Where have been for these years?" she smiled again. "Looking for you, Corvo. You haven't made it easy. But no matter, I am here now. And I don't like that last name. I want to be Cecelia Attano." Corvo looked into her eyes and said "I'll make sure of it." And they kissed and kissed under the Serkanos sky.


End file.
